Learning to Count

I can find no number but three in the pyramids: one point in the sky, two on the earth. The Colosseum, the Circus, these must be zeros; igloos, traditional mud huts, the grandest domes - pure, impeccable noughts, perfectly round alphas. Watchtowers, spires, minarets, all high-risers - apartment buildings, office blocks - ones. Rows and rows of ones, erecting themselves across the world (sometimes they are twos, but we have since seen some terrible mathematics). Fours? Surely these are seen from semi-detached London to every farmhouse on every farm, every log-cabin in every forest, every shack in every shanty-town in all the squalour of the earth. The Taj Mahal is a symmetrical five; five-sided castles teach the geometry of the stars. Pan-handle driveways in any spacious suburb make a six and nine nestle as good neighbours should. The sharp curve lifting roof-edges off pagodas, shrines, Buddhist temples - this reverses magical seven like houses on buckling stilts or the arc broken by the prow of a ship. But I can find no construction for eight: omega, infinite, eternal figure. Therefore I cannot count on these.

 

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